Why Are Soap Operas STILL On The Air?

You've probably seen them while channel surfing. Daytime soap operas - a genre of a bygone era, yet a few series (like George Romero zombies) still stagger on. Ask any soap fan, and they'll tell you: the medium is dying. Will the daytime soap manage to survive into the next decade?

[hapgood]

My mom said this happened on One Life to Live: A rich woman named Dorian meets a young woman living on the streets and starts to feel motherly toward her, eventually asking the young wonan to move in. One day a guy confronts the young woman and says " I recognize you from Las Vegas and I'm going to tell Dorian what you did in Vegas." The young woman kills the guy to stop him. Two or three other people recognize her from Vegas, threaten to tell Dorian and she kills them. When her murders are revealed and Dorian asks her "What did you do in Vegas??! And the woman screams "I WAS A WAITRESS! !!!,

[mesektet]

I say let it die. Everything has natural life-span. Besides it will just be back in a week anyway cause that soap opera was in-fact it's evil half brother from the Congo, while the real American soap was recovering from amnesia in a Turkish hospital.

[joshhale]

Craziest moment in a soap opera for me was when Dr. Drake Ramoray died from falling down an elevator shaft. But then came back almost 5 years later after a brain transplant on Days of our Lives. Absolute insanity.

[alaskawoolf]

A mexican soap opera: A poor but honest girl falls in love with a handsome, rich and good guy. Then she's kidnapped, gets sued, sent to jail, proven innocent then hit by a car, becomes paralytic, gets cured then goes blind, gets cured then gets amnesia, the evil bad woman hits her with a car and she recovers her memory, then her best friend betrays her and she becomes crazy, gets cured then her kid is kidnapped, then she saves him herself, then she drowns, then she fights with her boyfriend, goes find a new love but he turns out to be evil so she has a stalker now... In the end the bad guys go to jail, the protagonists get married and the poor but honest girl discovers she's the long lost kidnapped daughter of the richest people in town, and they live happily ever after.

How could you say it's badly written, you know how much creativity you need to keep new bad things happening every day?

[PyrotechNick]

Soap operas, where you can find more unexplainable resurrections than in DnD.

[michaelbrennan]

You missed the most important reason soaps are dying. From the 1950s to the 1990s there were only a handful of networks at one time 3. People had no choice but to watch. Today there are literally 100s of channels to pick from and on top of that, networks that specialize in material. It also explains why there are fewer recognizable stars today outside of movies.

[debbydhill]

Days of Our Lives - Julie was pregnant, passed out, Doug tried to call, no answer.. she regained consciousness, crawled to phone, picked up receiver and promptly passed out again. Doug called back, line was busy...she awoke again, put receiver back on hook and passed out again, Doug called again, no answer. This went on through an entire episode until Doug thought something was wrong and headed over there. Bear in mind this was in the 70's and my babysitter watched it. :)

[ThatOneEyedDog]

"Let it die, Let it die, Let it shrivel up and die"

[WhaleManMan]

One time, a soap opera villain shook a box of Frosted Flakes and shouted "THEY'RE GRRRREAT" at another character.
Yep.

[kagitsune]

"The stories are structured to last forever". So soap operas are basically Shonen Jump anime?

[mr.worldwide]

if i had to describe every soap opera ever in 2 words:
dramatic slapping

[Ama-Elaini]

Telenovelas resemble soap operas in many ways except in one major difference: they actually do have a clear plot and a definite ending. But I cannot say that I'm a huge fan of either.

[neilfordan]

You should watch soap operas here in the Philippines. Hahaha. They use water guns as weapons. Nurses in serious scene don't know how to perform CPR. And may more. :D

[Drod.riguezm]

This sounds like Supernatural “then they die then they come back then they get amnesia then they blow up”

[martinvadakara]

I guess people just don't want to drop the soap...

[AmeliaOak]

I was so into Guiding Light when I was like 11. I watched it with my grandma. I remember my favorite character Reva “died” and her husband was so heartbroken that he had her cloned.

They accelerated her age and she was nothing like Reva. Then we find out that Reva is ALIVE but stranded on a desert island, and I’m pretty sure she had amnesia. She comes back and there’s a fight over her man. I can’t remember how it happened but I think her and the clone became friends

[Blubatt]

Craziest thing: I'm British, so our Soaps are very different. Our soaps air during prime time and are less glamorous than American soaps. They're meant to be normal, working-class people struggling with normal, working-class situations. The craziest moment I've seen was from a Soap called EastEnders; which is based in a fictional part of East London. A woman called Heather, who was the comic relief, was giving birth to a baby. She was driven to a hospital in an Ice cream van that 3 pensioners stole from a chain-smoking and volatile alcoholic woman, who was in a relationship with the area's local gangster, Phil. One pensioner went with Heather, and supported her; sang George Michael with her in the delivery room (Heather was a big fan of the artist, and named her son after him), while the other two pensioners sat in the van, drinking vodka they found, eating ice cream and sweets, while Phil and the woman; Shirley, found the two women (one of the women being Phil's mother). It turns out that Heather's baby daddy was a 19 year old boy who shagged her out of pity after she was humiliated at a night club. And that was one half hour episode.

[finnmaccool]

okay but I love how you fight for both sides, you prove that soap operas can be boring and low quality, and they’re meant for advertising and passing time, but you also prove that soap operas work very hard to do what they do and we should at least appreciate their efforts. this and many other videos of yours are so well constructed and informative (and, rather witty) and I absolutely adore it. keep up the great work!

[omkarkulkarni]

A woman turns into a bad cgi fly. That's the craziest thing I have seen in a soap opera.

[gregorymckenzie]

I kind of want to see your math behind that Mars trip segment.